blog promotion - Express Writers

How to Promote a New Blog Post: 15+ Trusty Techniques to Try

November 11, 2022February 8, 2019 by Adam Oakley

You put lots of hard work into creating that new blog post. It cost you real money, time, and effort. ⏳ Now, how can you get serious return out of your content? Promote it. Without a boost from a few smart, strategic promotion strategies, that blog won’t get traction beyond bare-bones SEO and organic shares. (Which could be significant by itself, but why settle?) If you feel comfortable letting your blog hang out on the internet without any help, be prepared for a surge of activity followed by a quick decline. Your blog will limp along for a while until it’s forgotten entirely. If, on the other hand, you want to give all your new blogs a fighting chance at getting read by a wider audience – not to mention a longer lifespan online – promotion is essential! So, how to promote a new blog post in ways that actually get it noticed? Follow along as we share our best tips and techniques. How to Promote a New Blog Post: Your Comprehensive Guide to Boosting Traffic and Engagement 1. Do These 5 Tactics BEFORE You Promote a New Blog Post Make Your Blog the Best Version of Itself Build Your Email List Using Lead Magnets Optimize Your Blog Posts for Search Promote a New Blog Post Internally Build Relationships with Peers, Fans, Followers, and Customers 2. Promote a New Blog Post Using Email Segment Your Email List and Target by Interests Did You Mention a Specific Brand/Influencer in a Post? Email Them Write Your Emails the Right Way 3. Promote a New Blog Post on Social Media Use Instagram Stories Cross-Post to Each Platform You’re On Plug Your New Blog on Relevant Twitter Chats Add the Link to Your New Blog on Your Profiles Share Your New Blog Multiple Times on Fast-Moving Feeds Use Those #Hashtags and DO @ People Share Your New Blog to Your Social Media Groups and Communities 4. Promote a New Blog Post with Smart Tools Use Quuu Promote or Zest Curate Your Blog Posts in a Content Hub Add Social Sharing Buttons to Your Posts Do These 5 Tactics BEFORE You Promote a New Blog Post So, you’re all ready to start learning how to promote a new blog post. Hold on one second. There are a few foundations we need to cover first. Don’t skip these steps – they’ll help make blog promotion much, much easier. 1. Make Your Blog the Best Version of Itself Content promotion will mean absolutely nothing if all you do is lead visitors to a subpar blog. All the promotional tactics in the world can’t save mediocre content. Why? Quite simply, people don’t want to read, share, or engage with content that’s “eh.” They may be lured to a blog that sucks because they won’t know it sucks until they land there. Once they find out, they’ll bounce away from the crappy blog as fast as they can. You’ll be no better off than you were before. That’s why you MUST commit to creating the best blog this side of the internet. An amazing blog makes people want to stay, read, engage, and share. Plus: Amazing content promotes itself! A case study from Ahrefs nicely demonstrates this point. They regularly receive organic promotion from outside sources without any effort, like this Reddit post: As they explain in the post, Ahrefs did absolutely nothing marketing-wise to get this kind of great P.R. – their readers love their content, and that love makes them WANT to share Ahref posts. Simple logic, but something that a lot of people forget about when considering how to promote a new blog post. Make sure your blog is amazing at the start, and organic promotion will follow. 2. Build Your Email List Using Lead Magnets I can’t emphasize the importance of this next point enough: Build your email list to create a built-in audience for your blog promotion. According to the latest report from The Radicati Group, today there are over 3.9 billion people using email worldwide. That’s over half the population of the entire globe. Not only is email widely used – it generates the most ROI per dollar spent out of any other marketing activity. (A Litmus study estimated that email is worth an average of $38 for every $1 spent.) Your list, when you build it, is worth a TON. It’s a direct link to people who are interested in you/your brand, and thus the perfect channel for blog post promotion. Next question: How do you build your email list? Create lead magnets. Lead magnets are golden nuggets of content that are high-value. You offer these as exclusive downloads for your audience in exchange for their name and email address. A truly high-quality lead magnet is well-written and packs in tons of helpful/valuable information. Create lead magnets offering high-value information, then offer them to readers in exchange for their email address. Once you get their email – boom! – your list building has begun. Once you have an email list, send out messages to it with links to your new blog posts. Done and done. 3. Optimize Your Blog Posts for Search Besides blog promotion, don’t forget about SEO. It’s a major way to scoop up organic traffic to your blog posts from search engines like Google. That said, a LOT more goes into proper SEO besides just inserting keywords in the right places. You need to think about factors like: Content quality Whether your content fulfills user search intent for your focus keyword Whether your blog showcases relevant expertise for the topics you’re covering Your site design and page-load speed Your use of links and sources in your blog And more It’s important to get your SEO down before you think about how to promote a new blog post with other tactics. That’s because SEO is a passive way to draw more traffic and leads to your blog. Cover this base, draw in readers organically, and then hustle for more … Read more

15 Tactics To Start Using Today for Better Blogging

December 31, 2020February 23, 2016 by Adam Oakley

You’ve got a blog, but where are the readers? It’s gotten to the point where you’re wondering if you’ve got something worthwhile to say. If you’ve had this thought, even though you don’t know how to put it in action yet, I have good news–you’re headed in the right direction. It’s not just about reaching a lot of people. If you can reach millions and your content is useless, your Return On Investment (ROI) will be so low it doesn’t justify the time spent writing. There are some crucial things you can start doing right now, in the fundamentals of your blog writing process itself, that will turn around and bring you more readers and more success. Get on the road to better blogging today with a few simple, but key, tips. 15 Keys to Start Using Immediately And Get on a Path of Better Blogging You’ve got to have a good mix of value and reach, but finding that mix is daunting. Following is a list of fifteen ways that have proven successful in helping blogs reach a wider audience and becoming a better blogger, overall. 1. Outrage, Uplift, Mystery: Emotions in Headlines Matter! Whatever you’re writing, it needs to catch the eye and be emotional. Upworthy established a formula proven successful in the increase of clicks. It is comprised of creating headlines that alert customers of an “outrage” they can resonate with, uplifting them with the possibility of a solution or some other fulfillment, and establishing mystery throughout. Here are examples of headlines that use this formula: You Won’t Believe The Discount Opportunities This Weekend, Or The Secret Coupons Don’t Be A Victim Of Internet Scamming Through Hidden False Flag Social Media Campaigns Is Our Government Losing Its Mind? Insider Tips On Corporate Savings Note how each of these hits the reader in a relatable way at the beginning of the headline. Then, each title gives the reader a possible “uplift” (opportunities, don’t be a victim, tips). Finally, none of these titles give away enough information to let the reader move onward without clicking. Now, one thing I’d bet we all hate is the “click-bait-that-doesn’t-deliver” title. You know, the ones that get you to do a thousand clicks through a ton of ads before you can get anywhere. Don’t be that person. You can be honestly outrageous without outing a cold lie about what your content delivers. So, a couple do’s and don’t’s here: Do: Be authoritative, challenging, fun, and even shocking in your title–as long as your content delivers on what the title actually says. (Give them those coupons and the coupon code. Give them actual examples of those bad social media campaigns. Show them a list of 10 great insider tips–not something that’s common knowledge.) Don’t: Mislead. Click-bait title with no content that actually delivers on what you’re offering in the topic. (10 Ways You Can Actually Find Your Soulmate Today, for example, is pretty hard to fulfill on.) CoSchedule has some pretty awesome headline resources. Check out their headline analyzer and read their tips on how to get more emotional with your headlines. Check out the Advanced Marketing Institute’s headline analyzer as well. We also have a free guide with over 120 power words for better headlines: get it here. Playing around with that tool and utilizing guides with power words can get you great results. I worked on the headline of this very blog for about 20 minutes to get this score from the AMI tool: 2. Is Your Blog Mobile Friendly? Simple, but key. Half of all consumers conducting a search locally on their smartphone followed their search with a visit to the store within 24 hours, while only 34% did the same on a computer tablet. As smartphones become regular features of society, blogs that are easy to navigate on them will naturally increase in readership. When writing a blog, don’t forget to keep the mobile angle in mind. 3. Utilize Good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques 3 out of 4 people (75%) who conduct a search on a search engine won’t scroll further than the first page of results. This means that if your blog doesn’t show up within that first page, it is 75% less likely to even be seen. You’ve got to have it optimized for a search engine, and SEO techniques like keyword inclusion are a great way to do that. You shouldn’t go overboard with keywords, but the right amount will very likely increase your readership. Writing a good meta description for every blog is also a key of SEO blogging. Also, beyond outrage, uplift, and mystery, have a title that is likewise optimized with your keyword. 4. Aim Your Blog At The Right Audience (Share-ability) It’s all about opportunity cost. You want the greatest opportunity for the least cost. That means you want to aim your content at an audience who’s likely to share your blog. If you give your content value and properly engage this audience, you stand to see circulation in a way that’s wider than any solo efforts could produce (Moz). 5. Do You Have Share Buttons Visible on Every Blog Post? Not only that, but share your blog on every social media platform yourself. Making sure your share buttons are visible is important to give every reader a chance to share with their network. Twitter has nearly the entire population of the United States in worldwide users monthly making posts, Facebook has about one billion users that are active, while Google+ and LinkedIn both have constituents that transcend 300 million. Between the four of them, that’s 1.871 billion potential readers—though certainly some crossover between the platforms is to be expected. The point is, you’ve got at least a billion possible readers out there through social media, just waiting to check out your blog. Increasing readership through social media is really worth your time. A lot of people in the above-listed networks share content they agree with. If you get yours trending, the potential for cost-free marketing is high. I’ll give you a secret here, too: I’ve … Read more